"A Scanner Darkly" DVD Launch Party

Client Profile and ChallengeIn 2006, Warner Brothers Entertainment, distributors of the movie “A Scanner Darkly” wanted to bring the experience of the movie to the Second Life Community. In conjunction with Green Grotto Studios and LC Media, I created an immersive event where visitors could experience the ‘drug-induced’ visuals that are a prominent element of the movie.My role as the designer of the experience was to make visitors feel like they were a part of the movie. I accomplished this with visual effects to replicate the feelings and emotions of the characters. Unusual sound clips from the movie, alternating darkness and bright lights and video clips allowed the visitor to get a sense of the drug, Substance-D, a glimpse of the movie and encouraged them to purchase the DVD upon its release.

SolutionUsing the existing campus of LC Media, we set out to give visitors a taste of what the characters were going through in the movie and put the visitor in their shoes. Literally – we wanted to take scenes from the movie and allow the visitor to put their own avatar in place of one of the characters. Unfortunately, there were some legal roadblocks in terms of using the actors’ likenesses in ways that didn’t exist in the movie. For example, we could show a video or still from the movie untouched, but we couldn’t show a Second Life avatar riding in the car with one of the actors.

Switching gears, it became obvious that what the visitors would want wasn’t just clips of the movie. They wanted an experience. Walking down a dark path (dubbed “New Path”), the visitor could suddenly find themselves being followed by a giant insect. Using a heads-up-device “pill” called Substance D, users could see hallucinations like spiders crawling across their vision. Blue flowers would randomly explode while they chatted with others.

ResultsOver 300 residents attended the one-night event in Second Life and the following DVD release of “A Scanner Darkly” was widely successful.